Doughnut Hole
by nothing-chan
Summary: When England awakes as Arthur Kirkland, a suburban teenager, he seems to be the only one who remembers what he and his now human partners used to be. Lost in a convoluted reality, Arthur searches philosophically for an explanation while juggling average teenage life, only to happen upon an answer he wishes he could forget. [Proving you were really here, is something I can never do]
1. Chapter 1

_ドーナツの穴みたいにさ __It's like the hole in a doughnut:_

_穴を穴だけ切り取れないように __You can't isolate the hole,_

_あなたが本当にあること__ Proving you were really here_

_決して証明できはしないんだな __Is something I can never do._

* * *

Arthur Kirkland woke up at 7:00 AM on August 31st to a rude alarm. The time was not abnormal, the proper waking hour for a man with business to attend to. Yet, he was not a man this time.

He awoke as a teenager.

The gawky sprawl of his legs was what alerted him first, sleep laden mind twitching at the unbearable sharpness of his elbows. Then it was the lack of morning stubble, the concave of his chest, a strange wish to bury himself in a burrow of blankets and lose himself to his dreams once more.

Arthur almost pissed himself, who would want all of this again.

His mind did conceive odd dreams while he slept, but he had always prided himself on his creativity. Besides, it could be worse, he was not dying or in any pain, just in a bed that was a bit too small for his chicken legs.

Sleeping within a dream was not as difficult as the man had expected, so he rested his eyes once more, until he was awoken, into what he assumed, happened to be reality.

But reality differs, you see.

"Arthur! You're going to be late if you don't get up! This is so unlike you, hurry up." Terrifying, a woman he had never met in his life loomed over his body, hands plastered to her hips in a matriarchal oppression. Arthur snorted at his mind's creation, rolling onto his distinct hipbone, back to the woman.

"I will soon, just wait."

Her absence passed unnoticed, until she reappeared, a torrential downpour of cold water in place of her words. The glass of cold water sloshed into Arthur's ears, and he all but screeched, flailing his half-naked, taunt body around the bed like a freakish fish.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Waking your helpless arse up, now get out of your room and to school before I turn on the stove and start boiling your next wake up call."

Arthur sat in a static shock, jaw loose and gaggling until she exited the room, ignorant in her smugness.

Something was not right, he was not waking up.

* * *

He had searched every drawer, emptied the closet, and sniffed every article of clothing to retain his own scent. This was his room, in all aspects it was his room. Books of his choice scattered along the shelves, medals for football tournaments passed, a map of himself along the North wall, overwhelmingly Arthur.

But this was not his room, it could not be his room. The bed was too small, the wall color was disgustingly different, everything was just all wrong. The cars outside his window drove on the opposite side of the road, there was no rain, and no fog scraped the city beyond his view. In fact, there was no city, just rows of conventional houses upon hills of petty note.

Arthur had spent fifteen minutes deciphering it all, before he determined he had to wake himself up.

How does one go about waking themselves up from an uncannily realistic dream? If he were to kill himself, perhaps, but he feared the pain. Sleeping was no option, or the she-demon of his mind would torture him endlessly. Everything had a distinct feeling, and that was what scared him the most.

With Arthur, there always was analyzing, a thought process for each idea, until the emotion he kept corralled inside took hold. Now, he felt scared, and desperate to wake up in his own bed, not the awkward twin that sat dripping water to the wood floors. He was so afraid, so, so, so afraid. Arthur felt alien and trapped inside his skin, the tears of frustration began to form behind the glass layers of his eyes.

Steps came rushing up the stairs, and he sucked a breath in. Cornered, cornered, cornered, corner. The corner. The wall. Run into the wall. Hit your head awake.

It seemed so perfectly logical that he barely had a flash of guilt when he slammed into the wallpaper so hard the drywall cracked beneath.

* * *

This room was becoming a question of his mental state. He had not left the bedroom in one day, with no visitor other than the odd woman who looked at him with a pained expression. She did not ask why, not yet, and the newly christened teenager took this opportunity to think. Arthur began to consider if his mind had created a maternal figure, one as convoluted as himself.

It was all a confusion of the prospect of reality. He had spent many hours thinking on it, unable to sleep until the Doctor examined his concussed head, and arrived at the conclusion that he had entered another state. Not another dimension per say, just another perception.

'All we have to base reality off of is our eyes, and they can be so flawed as to look the wrong way or collapse and not work at all. So why do we trust a human organ with the duty of something as otherworldly as reality? The same for our other senses, what assurance do we have in them? It's simple, the human reality is as flawed as any of the things we perceive it with, and our reality is not the creation of years of celestial reshaping, but of our own minds. Every signal sent scathingly to our brain is a brick in the castle of our own reality, and mine has crumbled. I'm somewhere new, I'm in the same place, but it is all different, it's all still reality-'

It took the door opening to make Arthur realize he had been talking aloud.

Tall and commanding even at the age of 14, Alfred F. Jones watched his best friend shiver beneath his sheets.

"Bro, what the hell happened to you?"

Arthur lost the already trivial ability to speak, and blew the remainder of his breath out of his plugged nose, whistling throughout the house. He was so small, then again, so was Arthur, but the sight of a prodigious man reduced to a child with a book-bag slung against his underdeveloped back left the room in a lagging haze.

"America?"

Alfred chortled hesitantly, holding onto the straps of his sagging bag with both hands, as if to ground himself, "Yeah, that's where we live Arthur… Should I go get your mom? You don't look good…"

"America, come here, listen to me, what's happening to me, help me…" the slur of pleas lead Arthur to the edge of the bed, head reeling, hands clawing to keep himself balanced. The panic returned, another deconstruction of his perception ensued. Alfred took a step back, half out of the room when Arthur crashed to the ground.

"Mrs. Kirkland! Mrs. Kirkland help!" Said woman rushed into the room, crashing toward her lolling son. Her hands held Arthur securely, restraining him from pushing himself up.

"Go Alfred!" She said in an immediately regrettable tone, too focused to see the hurt on the impressionable boy's face.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't do anything I just-" He began to back out of the room, toward the staircase, when Arthur lifted his shrieking head.

"Please stay, Alfred please stay."

* * *

"So I heard you hit your head pretty hard man," Alfred took a bite of his sandwich, setting it down as it did not suit his taste, "It's cool if you act weird, I get it. I got a concussion when I was younger, my dad told me to jump out of a tree because I kept crying about how scared I was. BOOM! Smacked my head right on the ground! The Doctor said I was lucky I didn't knock my brain right outta my skull." He laughed, reaching over to pluck a crumb of crust off of his sandwich, plopping the morsel into his mouth.

"We missed you at school today. Kiku brought his new DS, and dude, he has a Shiny Beedrill already, isn't that crazy? He's so good at games, I wonder how he gets good grades and does all that too." Alfred glanced up, swallowing, not out of fear, but from collection of saliva, as Arthur continued to peer out of the window, unmoving.

"Coach, well Dad, let me skip practice today when I told him what happened. How'd you fall again Arthur?"

"Arthur?"

The repetition of his often unused name pulled Arthur back into his reactive state and forced him to turn to face the sick reflection of a boy in front of him. He had been avoiding gazing directly at Alfred this whole time, mortified what he would see, and the straight-toothed, suburban smile ached just as badly as he imagined it would.

"Am-Alfred, do you really not remember anything?" Arthur reached out to place his hands onto his scrawny shoulders, feeling the possibility of power beneath them.

"Remember what?" The ripple of his developing muscles made Arthur cough, hands clenched against the cotton sweater.

"You don't know who you are...? Do you know how important you are? Do you understand Alfred? Please tell me I'm not crazy, please."

Alfred was still Alfred, not afraid, just intrigued with the uncomfortable behavior. Social cues lost, he shrugged his shoulders, sending Arthur's pencil arms flopping. "Dunno man, my Dad always said I was gonna make it big."

Alfred's face crinkled into a smile and he reached up to pat Arthur's hand, buoying him to his next breath with each motion. "But you're not crazy, just a little messed up right now. It's okay, you'll get better. Hey, look at me, I did!"

Somehow that sentiment was not comforting.

Alfred began to collect his things, giving into his stomach and reaching behind himself to grab the sandwich before shoving it into his gob. "I gotta go, text me okay? Lemme know when you're coming back to school, I'll start collecting your work. Later dude!"

When the door to his faulty room bounced against the frame as it shut, voices reprimanding to be quieter outside the range of his ears, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sat alone in an incommodious bed, completely human.

* * *

_Hello_

_I haven't written in forever wow. This will hopefully improve and is really a tool for me to get back into what I wish to do when I officially head to college. I'm not trying to pepper this with my normal figurative language simply because I want to try something a bit more reader-friendly, and to create a story where the important moments carry a weight that can't be outshone. _

_The song that inspired this is called Donut Hole sung by Gumi and created by Hachi. I changed it to doughnut for reasons._

_Also, I recently created a tumblr for my writing, mangledmochi. If you're interested I have some poems up (most aph), some of my cosplay, and I'll be talking a lot about this story and others in the works there. Feel free to follow and interact with me there as well._

_I plan on this being a rather long story, in an attempt to discipline myself into novel writing. However, I'm also working on college, high school, and my own original story I've created, so updates will be a bit spaced, but no longer than 2 weeks apart I suspect. There will be multiple ships, some unrequited, some already happily together, but to reveal them would give away vital parts of the story, so rest easy knowing what our main focus will be._

_If you're confused that's okay, this is meant as an introductory chapter, and I hope you stick around for the second (more clear) chapter I have already started._

_Please review, favorite, and have a wonderful day,_

_Paige Marie_


	2. Chapter 2

In his days of rest, Arthur began to write things down.

First, he wrote down what was imperative he knew. His mother had green eyes and dyed red hair, frazzled and split at the ends. She worked 6 days a week as a phlebotomist at the local blood donation center. She left at 8 AM and returned a bit past 7 PM. She drank a glass of tea, with honey and whiskey, every night, and seemed to have a perpetual throat ache. He had not seen his father, but assumed he was out or non-existent as no contact had been made.

Arthur himself was naturally presumed to be solitary, a great gift in his time of confusion. Alfred visited once to drop off homework, then left him to scribble incoherently in his freshly bound notebook he had requested his mother pick up for him. No friends questioned his state, and no family entered his room, a seclusion dome becoming incessantly familiar. His mother once attempted to question him about the reason for his head injury, skeptical and intelligent in her own way. But she was easily fooled by Arthur's superior age and experience, if not relevant on the surface. Arthur would grab his head and wail about how he could not remember, how it hurt, and the woman would skitter off, off put and, overall, exasperated.

Alfred, Alfred was a page turner. 14 and not fully grown into his body, he was just shaping up to become a high school legend. A new addition to the football team as a freshman, their friendship was oddly strained and confusing, but Arthur chalked it up to a lifelong friendship that was too sacred to fizzle out.

He was younger than when he had left him, and it hurt to see.

Alfred was younger, America was not. Alfred ceased to be America, yet America continued to be Alfred at the same time. Separate entities, or a mixed and construed concoction, Arthur could not tell. All he knew, was that Alfred represented America, his was the presence that filled that peculiar shape in Arthur's mind. Now all that was left was the introduction of the others, if there even were others, and the puzzle could be assembled.

The first piece was set.

* * *

Having a concussion proved to be of the utmost usefulness to Arthur's situation, albeit the pain. He truly had forgotten which direction to take to walk to school, how to navigate his classes, where exactly his locker was located and what the combination for its lock was.

Doctor's prescription in hand, Arthur met Alfred outside his home's front door, receiving a smile from his newly appointed tour guide.

"Mornin'! Man this is great, I get to be late to all my classes just to walk you to yours. And then I get to leave early! Why can't you hit your head more often?"

The absence of explanation caused a ho-hum, and though Arthur was older, 15 to be exact, Alfred still had to look down at him, "How are you feeling?"

"Alright," Arthur pulled out his schedule and flipped it around for the umpteenth time, scanning the classes with a gnawing repetition. Alfred watched, hair bouncing with his awkwardly long strides.

"I know you feel crappy man, but are you sure you're ok? You haven't said anything, like at all, and that's weird for you."

Perhaps the encouragement of emotion in this reality made Alfred more susceptible to sensing others moods. Although, America did not completely ignore when Arthur himself was acting off in their own world. Then again, they were the same exact person weren't they? Just younger and less tied to power.

Yes, at this age America inquired about many things, even Arthur's welfare. The blonde watched the fall sun scatter red leaves into his vision.

Then again, maybe Arthur was thinking too hard about things that did not matter.

"I'm fine thank you. I just prefer the quiet to your voice, like always."

Alfred's face erupted at this comment, and he tilted his head back to view the passing leaves. Arthur himself glanced at the sight too, smelling the deepness of the rain the night before.

He was not sure if it was the youth of his body, or being somewhere new that made this world seem immaculate. He could find no wormholes in the apples, no lack of clouds in the sky. Every white paneled home held his gaze as if it were a new work of art never envisioned before now. How peculiar it all was.

It was an overwhelming feeling of everything compared to the dull blues and pages of white the past week had held. Arthur figured someone could easily go insane from the barrage on the senses, if they had not been insane enough to notice it already.

"We're gonna be late, so you should probably just check in with the nurse during homeroom," Alfred swung his duffle bag of workout clothes carelessly, slamming it against Arthur's leg incessantly. "I'll meet you and walk you to first block then."

"Okay," Arthur absentmindedly watched the concrete building they were heading toward loom closer. Stragglers sprinted from their cars, losing the marathon with the bell, its piercing tongue making mothers in their SUVs honk in urgency. Already lagging behind his taller companion, Arthur stretched his legs further, making a swift sprint to the door.

"Ah! Nope!" Alfred swung over his body, grabbing onto the door handle, snatching it form Arthur's grasp. "After you."

Arthur raised his eyebrows in annoyance but did not vocalize any upset as he ambled through the door. Though he had never attended a high school, an American one at that, it did not exceed his expectations or disappoint him in any fashion. The fluorescents paled him and the tiled floors wobbled underneath with the morning announcements, commotion covering most of the words.

"Good morning Bobcats! I hope you're having a great Monday, because who isn't glad to be here!"

Alfred chuckled as he turned a corner, Arthur scrambling silently on his heels, examining posters across the walls with each step.

'Make a difference! Donate old cell phones today!'

'Interested in current affairs? Try Model UN!'

'Bobcats run 'em down!'

"Lunch today is chicken strips with a side of French fries, try some fat-free milk or juice with that!"

'Blue and white!'

'Parlez-vouz francais? Join French Club!

'No phones in the hallways.'

"With our football team gearing up for their first game, make sure to buy your tickets and keep that team spirit rolling! Blue and white!"

'Interested in an ad? Contact Yearbook.'

'Be creative!'

'Decathalon food drive this week!'

It all made Arthur sick.

How could this be the news? It may be for teenagers, but this was all? In his time here, he had not perceived one instinct of conflict, not once had he heard of any foreign issues.

On the days his mother was out, Arthur would sneak to the sitting room and turn on the big TV, munching from a bag of pretzels, and watch stale headlines fall across his eyes.

No wars, no affairs worth mentioning, just a steady stream of insults to the words, 'Breaking News.' It was a relief, sure, but in the lulling Arthur found discontent. It was all worrying, the lack of things to worry over.

"Say Alfred, has anything interesting happened? I've been too bothered to watch the news…" Arthur let his eyes run along the walls, picking up distinct, useless phrases with each poster passed.

"Hm… Uh, the Panthers drafted a new linebacker!" Alfred beamed proudly at his announcement, wavering slightly at the agitated growl of Arthur's response.

"You know I don't care about that," Because some things never change.

"I dunno, nothing really. I don't really pay much attention when my dad watches the news. Sorry."

Arthur supposed he should drop it, Alfred was a lost cause with these things in any universe.

"Right man, I'll be out here when the bell rings," Alfred whipped on his heels to a halt in front of a classroom, sending Arthur into a balancing act on his unsteady feet.

"Right, then you'll walk with me to my first block, which is… Geometry."

"Yeah, I'll be here, don't worry sheesh."

Yes, homeroom, a new frontier, how exotic. Arthur had always learned everything on his own, taught by private tutors, through years of rigorous self-study. How interesting to suddenly be forced to learn.

He walked into the classroom, largely unnoticed, relatively frozen at the sight of a stack of jet black hair. Hunched and lonesome, a pretty little picture wedged against the window, the boy glanced up with watery eyes to meet him. Tight jaw, bird bones, oh my, it was him!

It was Japan!

* * *

_Hi hi, life is crazy and I am so busy. I was accepted to my college of choice however! Sly reference to the Panther's ;))))_

_This is a bit of a filler I didn't really want to start the enigma of Kiku until next chapter so... woops! I kind of just wanted to set up the feeling of the world._

_If you have any questions, feel free to contact me over on tumblr at mangledmochi!_

_Have a beautiful day._


End file.
